5 Awesome tips for dealing with food cravings

5 June 2015

You’ve been so aligned all week – exercising every day, chowing down on veggies, acting in your own highest good… And then it hits you. All of a sudden, the ONLY thing you can think about is salted caramel chocolate. Or cheese-flavoured corn chips. Or cookies-and-cream ice cream, or whatever your particular poison is. The cravings won’t let you go – you try to resist, but can’t; they’re all consuming. So you give in and dive headfirst into your chosen treat like a mad thing, feeling all kinds of anger and shame in the process.

Sound familiar?

Cravings can get the better of all of us from time to time, especially if you’re not armed with constructive tactics and strategies to work through them. If you’ve been derailed and disrupted one too many times before, and are ready to (finally!) do something about it, here are my top tips for dealing with food cravings…

1 – Grab a glass of water, squeeze some lemon or lime juice in there to make it taste even better. Hunger can often be mistaken for dehydration. Drink a big glass and get on with your day. If you’re still thinking about the ice cream then

2 – Visualize your goals. Does eating the ice cream or chosen treat get you closer to your goals? Since your reading this I’m going to guess that your goals are along the lines of health, vitality, and generally feeling awesome! I’m going to make a wild guess that no it won’t, and after eating chosen item you probably going to be regretting it…

3 – Eat some protein and fat. You may not of eaten enough at Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner. Some suggestions are a small handful of nuts, a tablespoon of coconut oil (Great for sugar cravings), quarter an avocado or a natural protein shake. Check out my top tips on how to incorporate fats and which ones into your diet here.

4 – Do something fun! Occasionally food cravings are your bodies way of dealing with something it doesn’t actually want to deal with, or when your stressed this happens too. In most cases you are actually craving feeling better then your current state – instead of reaching for the ice cream do something that makes you happy! For some clients I actually get them to write a list of what makes them happy and pop in on the fridge for a great visual to do what makes them happy often! I would suggest putting on Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars Holy funk and dancing that craving away, but it’s your choice…

5 – Decode your cravings. If you find yourself regularly craving chocolate, cheese or salty foods, it’s likely that your body is trying to tell you that you deficient in something, and no its probably not ice cream – sorry! For example regular chocolate cravings can mean that your craving magnesium, there’s so many reasons. Keep a food diary and see what foods your lacking in your diet, and try and include more of them.